Instagram Gains Ground On YouTube In Agency Interest, According To New Strata Survey

April 28, 2017 at 12:15 pmby

The social media landscape continues to witness subtle, yet interesting shifts, according to this quarter’s most recent Advertising Agency Survey, conducted by Strata, the leader in advertising software. The Strata survey showed that Instagram continues to surge in generating advertiser interest while Facebook remains the top social platform for agencies. YouTube, however, is seeing a multi-quarter decline it is lead over Instagram, bringing the two within one point of each other in advertiser interest as 54% of agencies report plans to use YouTube against 53% for Instagram. Twitter, which historically held third place in agency interest until the second quarter of 2016, continues its slide with interest from 37% of agencies, finding itself just 10% above fifth-place LinkedIn.

Instagram

Facebook remains entrenched in first place as 95% of agencies are interested in that platform.

In terms of actual spend, 93% of agencies are currently spending money on Facebook, with 53% planning to spend on YouTube, and 49% planning on Instagram. More than half of agencies now plan to spend more than 5% of their overall advertising budgets on social media, with 22% allocating between 11-25% of their budgets on social, compared to 18% in 4Q16.

Regarding live streaming tools such as Facebook Live and Snapchat Live, 42% of agencies report that clients were interested in these innovations for their campaigns.

“Though Facebook has remained the dominant player in the social media space, the gradual shifts in focus to other platforms has been interesting to watch. There’s always been a premium on live, so it’s not surprising that agencies have an interest in exploring Facebook Live, Snapchat’s Spectacles, and Instagram’s Stories,” said Judd Rubin, senior vice president at Strata.

Local TV & cable remain the top overall priority for agencies (36% of agencies), while 24% reported that digital video was their primary focus, representing a 351% increase over the past year.

However, agencies are still split on the ROI of digital video as compared to traditional TV; 25% feel that it can be as effective as traditional TV, but 33% feel it isn’t, and 42% are unsure. When asked about digital ROI, more than 50% felt fairly or very confident that they were getting good value for their money, 41% are unsure, and 9% of agencies felt they were not getting a strong ROI.